GardenWeasel:jdawg3k: I've been using PCs for 25 years and I was blown away when I couldn't figure how to _print_ in when Word 2007 came out with the ribbon interface. I honestly still don't know how to use it --- it seems to be constantly hiding the one option I'm looking for.

So now I just use OpenOffice -- which does everything I need and has a menu structure that at least comprehensible

Stop treating your products like their puzzles designed to test the patience and sanity of your customers.

But, according to the Start Trek Technical Manual, constantly changing the interface makes users more productive because they identify controls by recognizing them instead of just learning their positions by rote.

I think the top management at Microsoft is actually secretly working for Apple and is deliberately working to destroy MS from within. Windows 8 (a great OS ruined by a stupid and counterintuitive Metro interface), the new Word licence that you can only install it one one PC ever, ribbons on everything and now this?

The vast majority of people who use Word and Excel are office drones who barley know how to rename a file. They have been trained like performing seals how to do certain tasks and that is what they do day after day. Changing the interface, the location of buttons, the layout of menus etc will fark them up big time. To them "the internet" is "the big E on the screen" and trying to get them to understand that Firefox or, god help them, Chrome, can do the same thing is nigh on impossible unless you use the IE icon and just edit the destination to Firefox.